Solaris

Solaris is a 1972 science fiction art film adaptation of the novel Solaris (1961), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.The film is a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled out because the meager skeleton crew of three scientists have fallen into separate emotional crises. Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to the Solaris space station to evaluate the situation only to encounter the same mysterious phenomenon as the others.

The original science fiction novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem is about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between humans and other species. Tarkovsky's adaptation is a “drama of grief and partial recovery” concentrated upon the thoughts and the consciences of the cosmonaut scientists studying Solaris' mysterious ocean. The psychologically complex and slow-paced narrative of Solaris has been contrasted to hyperkinetic European and North American science fiction films which typically rely upon fast narrative pacing and elaborate special effects to communicate character psychology and an imagined future. The ideas which Tarkovsky tried to express in this film are further developed in Stalker (1979).

At the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, it won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. The film is often cited as one of the greatest science fiction films in the history of cinematography.